Happy Balloons And Real Dreamcakes

Last week, I co-chaired an event, and it consisted of three main areas: a party to celebrate the 90th anniversary of our group, a project to help and ‘adopt’ a school (more about that later), and for a sweet finish we invited sweet Jan Moon who owns Dreamcakes Bakery in Homewood, Alabama to come speak with us about her experience and expertise as she had worked in the Southern Living test kitchens and then went on of course to open her own successful business. Big plus: she has a new book, with Southern Living, called ‘Big Book of Cupcakes: 150 Brilliantly Delicious Dreamcakes‘. Jan was sweet enough to sign some copies for us after she spoke.

This pic on the left has me on the right, and Jan on the left, as I was introducing her, and the pic on the right…

…is my car, loaded with balloon arrangements from our party. We donated all the balloons to a local hospital to brighten patients’ rooms! Since all the balloons couldn’t fit in my car, many of them floated outside, and we had so many people smiling at us as we drove to the hospital! It was so fun!!

Well, this week I just had to try one of Jan’s recipes from her book so I made the strawberry cupcake (minus the food coloring, and a couple of other adjustments — only because I can almost never force myself to make a recipe straight from a book). This is my favorite cupcake from her bakery so I thought everyone might be tickled to try it at home:…it turned out *delicious*. So moist and so nice! BTW, those cute cupcake liners are Drommar from Ikea.